I have suffered from manic depression for a long time.
I remember the first time, I was in a mood for over 3 weeks, I thought it was normal considering what i just went through.. My boyfriend at the time, Joe had impregnated me and decided he wanted to relocate to a different country, even though we had made plans to travel together.. Let me give you a Little insight about Ada way before banking, way before this carefree attitude.. I grew up in the slums of lagos, My father was a commercial motorcycle rider for some years before he changed jobs, I remember washing his motorcycle was the most fun part of my day. We however didn’t start here, He was a rich man prior to my birth and in the early years following my birth, he had some complications and we arrived at that situation.
People would laugh at my father, bully him “haa see you, you wey get money before, see as you don be now na okada you dey drive”
The humiliation was too much, my father had to stop driving at day and resorted to driving at night; he would find men and women who worked at night and introduce himself to them, offering his bike services, just so we could feed.. In the compound we lived in with about 25 other people, He was constantly laughed at, only until i had grown up before I knew this.. We were sheilded from that negativity.. My father’s problem then, was he didn’t have enough education, he felt if he did, the misfortune that befell him wouldn’t have happened so he changed jobs, worked very hard up until the time he passed away to ensure that we all went to School….. It was the only thing he did, that I felt would make him proud where ever he is now… He never got to enjoy the fruit of his labour.
My father would never show disappointment or pain or sadness, Only happiness.. He is the only person you can trust to completely forget and forgive even your worst sins, I always used to wonder why he was so carefree, never letting anything bother him, All my life on earth, i don’t think I have ever seen my father think or brood about something for too long and somehow all his problems got resolved. While we are all screaming and wailing, not knowing what to do next..
my father would be calm, even have his favourite beer & smile through it all, eventually that problem would be resolved and he would make jest of us for raising so much dust over nothing. Only one time i ever saw my father cry and that was when I was misdiagnosed and a treatment given to me caused some complications for my heart.(story for a different day, I’m better now)
I went to school, graduated, got my second job before I met joe, Joe was a handsome man, still is. We had sex on the first day, I was hooked, he was too. We started dating. I had been in relationships before this but this was my first ever serious,serious thing.
(I didn’t know you were supposed to pretend like you didn’t like the person at first just so they can struggle to make you like them #mindgames) I was not good at mindgames, I am still not good at it… I wear my heart on my sleeve, I still wear it on my sleeve to this day, although before i threw the heart inside a cage but i have released it now😂
I opened all of me, all of my soul… This here was my one true love and it broke me more than anything ever did.
I will list my mistakes because its not everytime it is the man’s fault… I loved first before i understood him, I should have tried to understand what kind of man he was. Love made me too emotional, too needy, too clingy, it made me reason emotionally rather than logically.
He was not a phone call person, that pissed me off, in my head, I felt what kind of man loves a woman and not call her or write her except she does. If i had taken time to understand what kind of man he was, i would have found solace in the other “good”things he did
The phone call brought a lot of issues in our relationship, it became strained.
His fault was he became non- challant, He didn’t feel the need to reassure me, He knew I was in love and that I loved him more, He would regularly ask me to leave if i didn’t want to stay…. I didn’t leave, I was in love, where would I meet someone else that I would love like this. I was vain, I was in love with how he looked, wherever we went, people would say wow, you’ve got a great catch… If only they knew, it was a great catch of problems…. Adanne
It was the most beautiful and painful period of my life, I had an uncle who lived overseas so i told joe, Hey our country is a shitty place, we are in love, let’s relocate, go somewhere new. We are both hardworkers. What joe didn’t know was there was already plans underway for me to go school there… But I loved him and I didn’t want to leave him, he was the best thing that happened to me… I was deeply and madly in love… I wanted to be with him every passing second of the day… In my head, I felt, why would you say you love someone and then need space from them, what are you using space to do?? Is this essay writing, that you need paragraph??! 🙄🙄. After work then, I would go to his house, cooking and cleaning is nothing (never saw that as a chore or a gift you give to a man so i won’t reign that over his head)… I was having fun, he was getting choked.. I thought I was in love, I thought he loved me… Because if he did love me, why would he feel choked by my presence…I was naive… I craved his approval for everything I did.. The only thing that didn’t change about me before, during and after that relationship was my financial independence and hustling will.
I never demanded a thing from joe, not a dime, Haa, I didn’t want to stress him, I didn’t want to create a bad impression of myself. Till date, I think it has become second skin, it takes a lot of guts for me to ask for help… I had always had a feeble, emotional mind, if you are close to me, your words and actions get to me more than anything, but if i don’t know you or don’t care about you, well, bye Felicia 🙋♀️ And Joe knew this, the emotional manipulation was killing, He knew I was hooked, too hooked to go anywhere, I was madly in love. “Adanne, go home, get out of my house” — He would say while even throwing my things away after a small quarrel, Yes Joe had a fiery temper, he would destroy 20 years of good in 10 seconds if he is angry.. I would take my bag and sit outside his door, begging him, apologising for doing nothing wrong… It fucked with my psyche…
You know the funny thing, everyone who knew me, would say ohh you are a strong woman, look at how you are handling things for your age… Only joe knew my most innermost desires, he knew i wanted to be loved, to love someone… I wanted to say I love you after every phone call… I love you at the end of every message.
Phonecalls, text messages, emails… And he starved me of it… The more I didn’t get it, the more I craved it… I would say in my mind, this man is wicked, how can he know, this is one thing I want and then starve me completely of it… But i didn’t leave, I stayed.. When I got pregnant, I told him and he was immediately hostile, unbeknownst to me, he had privately secured his visa to travel outside of Nigeria to go work. I cried, wondering why he was so mad at me, I didn’t understand why, I couldn’t understand it… My heart was broken.
He invited me to his place and told me he had no money, I had not received my salary at that time and I was pleading we keep the child.. After all we were in love, we were both hardworkers, he was an upcoming designer at the time but i believed in his ability and his potential, I was ready to work to support us, until whenever he was on his feet… I didn’t mind that it had only been a year since we started dating.. We were in love..Or I was in love..
My joe travelled, leaving me here pregnant, for weeks, i didn’t hear from him, i didn’t want to carry a child and be disgrace to my father (he was alive then) after all the suffering he had to endure to ensure i went to school and now that i just started working, aiding him to support our family.. I will now introduce a child outside wedlock, it would have broken his heart. I went to see a doctor and i took out the baby, Looking back now, It is the 4th worst experience of my life.
At the useless hospital, where it was done, i had lost a lot of blood, and i was very weak, my friend who went with me, took a picture of me and sent to him, trying to get him to come to the hospital, he read and didn’t reply… 3 weeks and 4 days had passed and I didn’t hear from him…. Not a single word. Not Hello, not How’s ur health.
In all of that period, I worried if he was fine
That 3 weeks and 4 days was the longest years of my life (pun intended). It was the actual time i knew what depression was, what actual pain was… I metamorphosed into a flip side version of myself, something I never had… Pain, anger and Sadness has mixed into my psyche and all three refused to leave, no matter how much i tried… Before then, all three used to roll off my back like water, thats why when we would fight, i would beg for forgiveness, even when i wasn’t wrong… I loved our peace and I wanted to protect it, I never let anything to get to me, but for the first time I was no longer translucent, I was no longer a sieve… All my holes (not sexual, I’m using holes in the context of a sieve) got blocked by pain, anger and sadness.. I cried like a child, lost all zeal, I didn’t want to be anything, Go abroad to school as what?? For why?? Mind you, I didn’t know at this time, that joe had travelled out of the country, I felt he was still here and didn’t want to see me or cared to see me.
I summoned courage and eventually called him… The phone rang twice before he picked up… “Was i really that bad to you, did i offend you, please forgive me” – My first statement.. He listened, not saying a word, I was crying, he said Sorry, I forgave…. I was in love, I was stupid, I thought I shouldn’t have gotten pregnant in the first place, maybe he wouldn’t have left…
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